Advanced Practice Clinicians (APC) are civilian mid-level providers (ex. nurse practitioner, physician assistant) who have the ability to order imaging. Though, some proponents have suggested that mid-level providers may be inappropriately ordering unnecessary imaging for their patients. Hypothetically, this could lead to increased healthcare cost and spending. Hughes, Jiang, & Duszak (2015) used Medicare claims…
Manual therapy: how many techniques do you really need?
There are so many advertisements from various companies that offer courses for manual therapy. Whether it’s joint manipulation, soft tissue mobilization (STM), instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM), or dry needling (DN), the companies will promote how these skills will improve your results in the clinic. While that may be true, there are a couple…
Do we need to stick everyone?
Dry needling (DN) is a manual therapy technique that is increasingly being incorporated by a variety of medical practitioners. Physical therapists, chiropractors, and physicians utilize this intervention for a variety of reasons. It has been suggested that DN produces local and central nervous system (CNS) responses that result in the reduction of both peripheral and…
PTs: what are we good at? what needs work?
Physical therapists (PT) are extremely knowledgeable in their respective specialties. As a matter of fact, Childs et al. (2005) performed a cross-sectional study where they compared the musculoskeletal knowledge of physical therapists and physicians. A standardized written examination was given to all the participants for accurate comparison. These PTs were compared to physicians from a…